Bureau of Meteorology’s eight day outlook from Friday February 2.

MORE significant rain is expected across already wet parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory, as ex-tropical cyclone Kirrily continues to hang around and the chance of another cyclone increases.

After making landfall last week, ex-tropical cyclone Kirrily is currently sitting in the gulf country on the Qld/NT border. It has delivered some huge storms in the past 24 hours, including 332mm on Westmoreland station – which is in the top western corner of Qld.

The system is forecast to turn away from the Gulf of Carpentaria, head south for the Barkly Tablelands and keep going down to the channel country, before moving through Western New South Wales.

While the low is headed for some areas that have not seen much rain in the past week, it has worried producers in some of the wetter parts of the state. NAPCo chief executive officer Allan Cooney told Beef Central yesterday that he was keen to see the company’s Kynuna station avoid heavy rain in the next week after its homestead was flooded earlier this week.

On top of Kirrily, BOM is monitoring a tropical low in the Coral Sea which it said had a 25pc chance of forming into a cyclone from Thursday next week.

“The potential for an impact to the Queensland coast late next week will continue to be monitored with updates provided on this page,” BOM said in its cyclone forecast.

Cattle supply falling off a cliff

Aside from some isolated parts of Central and Western Qld, most of the sunshine state has received at least 50mm in the past week.

A combination of wet paddocks and road closures has seen cattle numbers fall off a cliff at some of the state’s biggest saleyards. Dalby only managed to yard 774 head on Wednesday, down from about 4000 the previous week. Roma’s Tuesday sale snuck in before the rain became widespread and yarded about 3000 head, which was still down from about 5000 the week before.

Beef Central’s Weekly Kill article earlier this week highlighted some processors offering “wet weather money” to keep up throughput and some plants declaring closures on days this week.

The lack of supply has seen the benchmark eastern young cattle indicator break the 650c/kg carcase weight mark for the first time in more than six months earlier this week. It has kept on rallying and is currently sitting on 667.41c.

Northern Territory also receiving flooding

The top end of the Northern Territory has also seen some big rainfall in the past week, with some parts that haven’t received rain expected to be under ex-tropical cyclone Kirrily in the coming days.

Floodwaters have cut roads and the town of Timber Creek in the Victoria River District has been cut off for more than two weeks – without its food supplies being replenished.

Local mustering contractor and producer Raine Holcombe took to Facebook to talk about her husband having to hire a helicopter and borrow a friends ute in Kununurra to stock up with supplies – with no help from the Northern Territory Government. The story has been covered extensively by the NT media.

Ms Holcombe said there had been extensive losses of fences, cattle and horses in the area.